On Fri, 7 Dec 2007 at 15:43:48, Stella Dextre Clarke
<sdclarke@lukehouse.demon.co.uk> wrote
>> (ISSUE-39C) What's the difference between "related" and
>> "overlapping"? Is there enough precedent to justify a new
>> property for "overlapping"?
>Three options have been discussed, namely related, overlapping and
>inexact. I guess I am biased by long familiarity with "related". I feel
>it is sufficient to choose just one, and that it should be "related".
>It seems to me that "overlapping" is a subset of related, and harder
>for simple people to use in a hurry. The definition of the associative
>relationship (RT/RT) in a thesaurus has always been subjective, which
>some people see as a failing (but I see it as a strength, so long as we
>recognise that the fuzziness is present).
I agree with Stella that in the traditional thesaurus structure
overlapping terms have generally been treated as related terms. In
BS8723-2:2005 we discussed this in paragraph 8.4.2: "Preferred terms
with overlapping meanings", with the example of "ships" and "boats".
Another example might be "students" and "pupils".
It would be valid to define "overlapping" as a distinct type of
relationship, where the scopes of two concepts overlap but neither is
contained within the other. One specific feature of an "overlapping"
relationship is that both concepts must fall within the same facet, e.g.
"objects" or "people" in the examples above. Related term relationships
are often, though not necessarily, between concepts in different facets,
such as "ships RT sailors" or "pupils RT teaching".
The question is whether making this distinction is useful. In a
thesaurus intended for human rather than machine interpretation, all
that is needed is a way of saying "you have asked for A; you might also
find it useful to consider using B in your search statement".
Going further than this means moving into the role of ontologies
designed to allow machines to make these decisions. As I understand it,
that is not the purpose of SKOS.
Leonard
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